Shopify has solid SEO foundations out of the box, but the platform's architecture creates specific challenges you need to address manually. Start with product and collection page optimization—write unique, keyword-rich titles and meta descriptions for every page, front-loading your primary keyword in the first 60 characters of titles. Shopify's auto-generated titles often just use your product name, which wastes ranking potential. Duplicate content is Shopify's biggest SEO weakness. Products appearing in multiple collections create duplicate URLs unless you set canonical tags correctly. Go to Online Store > Preferences and ensure your canonical tags point to the primary product URL, not collection-filtered variants. Also disable tag and vendor pages from indexing if you're not actively optimizing them—they're almost always thin content that dilutes crawl budget. Site speed matters more for e-commerce than informational sites because conversion rates drop 7% for every additional second of load time. Audit your installed apps monthly and remove anything non-essential—each app typically adds 50-200KB of JavaScript. Compress product images to under 200KB using WebP format, and lazy-load images below the fold. Enable Shopify's CDN (it's automatic) but consider upgrading to Shopify Plus if you're doing over $500K annually, as you'll get better server response times. Build a clear site architecture with collections organized by category, then subcategory. Link related products within descriptions using exact-match anchor text, and create buying guides or landing pages that target informational keywords like "best running shoes for flat feet" that link down to individual products. Google rewards sites that answer questions before pushing the sale. Technical wins: Submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console, enable SSL (standard on all Shopify plans), and use Schema markup for products, reviews, and breadcrumbs. Shopify includes basic Schema but you'll need apps like JSON-LD for SEO to add review stars and FAQ markup. At Ottawa SEO, we typically see 15-40% organic traffic increases within 90 days when clients fix these fundamentals systematically rather than chasing individual keyword rankings.